1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an imaging device for capturing an image of a subject, an imaging system including the imaging device, a communication device used in the imaging system, an imaging method executed by the imaging device, and a computer-readable recording medium.
2. Description of the Related Art
Recently, regarding an imaging device such as a digital camera and a digital camcorder, there is known a technique for displaying a live view image corresponding to image data generated by imaging on a display unit and sequentially transmitting the image data to an external communication device such as a mobile phone using a communication technique (for example, see Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. 2003-250079; hereinafter, this document is referred to as Patent Document 1).
The technique described in Patent Document 1 is a technique for remote-controlling an imaging device from a communication device.
Concretely, in the technique described in Patent Document 1, the communication device sequentially receives image data transmitted from the imaging device and sequentially displays live view images corresponding to the image data on the display unit. A user of the communication device executes an imaging operation with the communication device at a timing desiring to control the imaging device to record image data as checking the live view images displayed on the display unit of the communication device. In response to this imaging operation, an image data record request is transmitted from the communication device to the imaging device. After receiving the record request, the imaging device generates image data by capturing an image of a subject, records the image data, and transmits the recorded image data to the communication device. In other words, the user of the communication device can obtain desired image data in response to the imaging operation executed with the communication device.
Here, for example, when the imaging device and plural communication devices communicate one another, it is considered that the imaging device and the plural communication devices communicate as follows.
The imaging device transmits image data (live view image) generated by imaging to one of the communication devices and transmits next image data (live view image) generated by imaging to another of the communication devices. In other words, the imaging device sequentially transmits newest image data to the plural communication devices in predetermined order.
As a result, the communication device sequentially receives image data at an interval of a number of frames corresponding to the number of the communication devices that communicate with the imaging device from the pieces of image data which are sequentially captured by the imaging device, and sequentially displays live view images at an interval of the number of frames.